joe found out this weekend that he'd be needed down in washington. his business travel is minimal, but these little blips come up every so often, and we have a routine: he usually takes off after work midweek, i watch a lot of gratuitous lady-movies,* and the train brings him back on friday or so. this time the trip coincided with a light week at my office, so i came along. i considered cultivating a sneaky hooker vibe, but i'd never be able to keep a straight face for something like that, and really, i just kept thinking of my only other trip to DC, which was for an MUN conference at georgetown when i was sixteen. back then i divided my time pretty evenly between security council sessions with my best friend, generic local tourism, and sneaking off to meet these guys who'd come down to the conference from some high school in brooklyn (BK1: "we're the delegation from yoo-krun." BK2: "it's ukraine, jackass!"): this time it was food pilgrimages (joe's half of dinner could be expensed, at least), a late-night death march down pennsylvania avenue so i could get my sorkin on in front of the white house, a quick craft museum trip during the work meeting, and generic "circle game" musings on the passage of time (i kept trying to take photos of myself in our hotel suite's megamirror, but i don't have the stomach to compare them to pictures i saved from the '95 georgetown trip**). it was exhausting, and lovely, and more than a little weird.

the department of health was offering free swine flu shots at the train station on wednesday, but no, joe said, that was not his idea of a romantic souvenir. "am i making it new for you? you know, washington. with my eyes."

as many of the museums weren't new to me, i followed "game fish" wabes's suggestion and checked out the renwick gallery, home of the smithsonian's craft and decorative arts program. it is wondrous, to put it mildly, and has things like a marlin made of action figures and game pieces (the aforementioned game fish), a ghost clock, my new favorite self portrait...go. particularly if you're a been-there, done-that museumgoer.

joe and i met up at cowgirl creamery downtown for a lunchtime cheese feast; about half of what we bought ended up coming home in my purse, so i hope amtrak was kind-but-not-too-kind to the fancy bacteria in our red hawk and super-aged gouda.

we holed up in a dupont circle bar for happy hour, had tapas and vegetarian(!) paella at jaleo, and woke up on our train just before it left penn station and headed for boston. almost sixteen years on, the district and i are alright.

the action-packed 24 is sort of deceptive, really: on a longer trip we'd absolutely have slowed down into my typical molasses tourism (a drippy, wandering-the-streets thing that's much more our style). it helped to have only a day, as anything we wanted to do had to be done immediately or not at all.

cowgirl creamery was on the design*sponge city guide; i'd seen the name on fancy cheeses around town here and then perked up when i saw it again there. they stock some fine beer as well, though it's for purchase rather than to be served.

i'm so glad you had fun! (i wanted to tell you that i thought the renwick would be super in part b/c of your mom's artistry.) the city still has a big piece o' my heart, really, and it's for little things like the renwick and looking down into rock creek park like that. i don't get tired of the monuments at night, either. you should see the taft bridge from below, it's all sorts of awesome! better in the spring or fall, though. and, p.s., jaleo was kolz and i's first real date. : )